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Owner of PageF30.com.
Translator of Demian by Hermann Hesse into English - an interlinear translation for German students and those who want to see the original text.
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/mithradates
Fluent in Japanese, Korean. Proficient in Mandarin, Turkish, German, French, Portuguese, others.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Hi - if you're here due to a Twitter update, check the bottom of the post.

In addition to Ahmadinejad's cancellation at the African Union summit there was some more diplomatic fallout today with the Sultan of Omar delaying his official trip to Iran, which would have been the first trip since the fall of the Shah.

A New York Times article here details some of the steps the EU might take with Iran due to the current situation, especially the detaining of British embassy employees. Note that it says that the EU is Iran's largest trading partner, which gives it a leverage that the United States simply doesn't have - this is something Reza Aslan mentioned during his appearance on the Daily Show.

It's also for this reason that the National Iranian American Council is calling for people to put pressure on the EU, Russia and China in response to this.

An article on the same subject can be seen here, where Mousavi (along with Karroubi from a bit earlier) declares the current government to be illegitimate.

Also note in the same link giving the translation of Mousavi's statement that there is a reference to a statement given by a very conservative cleric ("I loathetheWestandwillfighttothelastdropofmybloodbefore I ormylandsuccumbstotheWest") named Haddi Ghaffari that turns on Khamenei and calls Ahmadinejad a lunatic.

So far it has been 19 days since the election and thus far only 11 countries have officially recognized the election results: Tajikistan, Armenia, Oman, Russia, China, Azerbaijan, Amir Qatar, Afghanistan, Turkey, Pakistan, Venezuela. You can see them here.

The thing about these countries is that they either border Iran or are very close to it, or are ideologically close to Ahmadinejad (Venezuela). Or simply don't care (Russia and China).